The first workshop in our experimental session features two teaching presentations and two lesson demonstrations. The presentations will explain the educational value of Atlantic and Pacific World histories for college students struggling to understand their diverse communities. The next two panelists will reinforce their colleagues’ arguments by demonstrating ways to teach with online primary sources that represent these transnational historical approaches. Workshop attendees will participate in activities that these panelists designed for their classrooms, and the panelists will form small groups to answer attendees' questions or recommend modifications for each activity.

Kelli Nakamura will share how she integrated themes of Pacific, World, and Atlantic history into her history courses to provide a broader global and indigenous context for events within American history. Traditionally, most American history courses focus on domestic events with only a limited World, Atlantic, and Pacific context. They also exclude indigenous voices and experiences that are often subsumed under the larger narrative of the creation of the early republic. Thus, adding Pacific and Atlantic Rim perspectives in core and upper-division American history courses helped achieve two important goals: (1) incorporating histories of indigenous populations of the Pacific and Atlantic Rims provided students an opportunity to have a personal connection with their history studies; and, (2) incorporating a broader regional perspective helped students to be prepared to be leaders in a global environment.

Brittany Adams will address the ways in which de-centering British colonial history benefits students in a diverse California classroom. Brittany will present a history of borderlands colonial history in southern California and discuss the ways in which shifting the focus away from a traditional 13 colonies narrative allowed students in her classroom to see representations of their personal ancestral histories beyond a tokenizing of Asian-Pacific and Latinx histories around the time of western expansion.

Kimberly Hill’s lesson demonstration uses pages from the Slave Voyages and Virtual Jamestown databases to inspire questions about how people experienced the Middle Passage or indentured servitude. Participants will practice qualitative analysis of statistical business records while discerning details about the lives of trans-Atlantic travelers who otherwise seemed lost to history.

Amy Powers will share how she has incorporated Pacific World themes in her early U.S. History survey (American History to 1865). Using digital resources from the Online Archive of California, Calisphere, and the Library of Congress, she asks students to explore immigration to the West Coast during the California Gold Rush era. The assignment allows students to investigate themes of labor, migration, and cultural diversity on the North American West Coast and discern the United States’ role in the development of the “Pacific World.” This will be an interactive session that provides participants with an opportunity to examine photographs and other digital artifacts from online collections.